New England
New Music
Across 12 festivals, since its foundation in 2003, the New England Bach Festival has presented more than 300 works by JS Bach in counterpoint with repertoire written by more than 40 living composers, including 17 Australians.
In a commissioning program championed by composer and recorder player Benjamin Thorn (Festival Director 2006—2025), the New England Bach Festival has commissioned and premiered ten new works to date. Some of these New England composers are listed below.
Matthew Minter trained as a pianist and studied with Nikolai Sokolov at the Australian Institute of Music and Phillip Shovk at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where he completed his Bachelor of Music (performance). Matthew pursued a successful teaching career and was the Director of Music at PLC Armidale from 2016 to 2021. During this time Matthew shifted his professional and artistic focus to composition and to this end studied with Dan Walker from 2015 through to 2019. Matthew has achieved promising success in several competitions including second place in the Golden Key International Piano Competition and Second place in the National Orpheus Music Competition. In 2021 and 2022 Matthew took leave from his position at PLC Armidale to study composition full time with Robert Davidson at the University of Queensland where he completed his Masters of Music.
Matthew’s publications include: Towards Eternity Middle C Music (2017); A Perfect Storm Singscore (2019); Shepherd’s Song (Orpheus Music (2021) and Juno Singscore (2023).
His works have been performed with, Opera Queensland (2022) Brown Eyed Girl; Vox Camerata Singapore (2022) Call of the Country; Armidale Symphony Orchestra with Lamorna Nightingale (2023) Piccolo Concerto; Sydney Children’s Choir (2021) A Perfect Storm; PLC Sydney and PLC Armidale Combined Symphony Orchestra (2019) Tomorrowland, and St Peters Lutheran College with soloist Yuro Lee (2021) A Sorcerer’s Tale.
Matthew Minter
The Welsh-born guitarist, Stephen Thorneycroft, showed interest in guitar-related activities from an early age, starting with the ukulele at age 2...! He began studying the classical guitar at age 9 and after moving to Australia in 1985, Steve's playing moved sideways into steel-string and electric guitar, the electric side particularly reflective of his early inspiration of Hank Marvin & The Shadows.
Currently, Stephen Thorneycroft is a music lecturer at the University of New England (Armidale, Australia), local guitar teacher and is one half of the EphenStephen guitar duo. EphenStephen has released 2 CDs to date: "GUITARmidale" (featuring works by composers living locally to their area) in 2006, and their arrangement & performance of J S Bach’sGoldberg Variations BWV 988 for two guitars in 2008. They are regularly broadcast on ABC Classic FM.
Stephen Thorneycroft holds a BMus(Hons) in performance and composition. He has been a finalist in the Australian Guitar Competition, and played in a diverse range of genres with many and varied ensembles ranging from the average pub gig to solo/duo recitals through to concertos. Steve has premiered many new works for guitar, both as a soloist and with Stephen Tafra in EphenStephen, the latest of which was Steve's own piece Spin Cycle for two guitars, marimba and orchestra in 2008.
Stephen Thorneycroft’s compositions & performances have a broad range of focus, from surf guitar instrumental music through to contemporary western art music & everything in between. His music has been commissioned & played by a wide variety of musicians, from students through to professional ensembles, and with EphenStephen guitar duo premiered & commissioned much new music for guitar duo. Of particular relevance to Steve’s creative output is an interest in the New York minimalist & post-minimalist scene & composers, as well as the areas of transcription and ‘60s guitar instrumentals.
Steve Thorneycroft
Paul Marshall is currently Head of Wind, Brass & Percussion at the New England Conservatorium of Music. A conductor and composer, he studied saxophone performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with James Nightingale and Mark Walton. He ran a successful teaching studio with his wife Louisa Sindel-Marshall in Sydney before taking on a new position at the New England Conservatorium of Music in Armidale in 2016.
Initially, Paul's compositions were focused on students, providing specific challenges for his own students. Recently his focus has been on his own education and expansion as a composer, writing in a variety of styles including jazz and classical.
Paul has many pieces and collections published with Reed Music, including a number of pieces included in the AMEB syllabus for Clarinet, Saxophone and Cello.
In 2009, the Beecroft Orchestra premiered Paul’s Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, with Louisa Sindel as soloist. He also hopes to work on new compositions with the Continuum Saxophone Quartet and the Arcadia Wind Quintet in the coming years.
IIn 2018, Paul was commissioned by the Armidale Youth Orchestra to compose a celebratory 50th anniversary piece. The Armidale Symphony Orchestra recently performed his orchestral pieces, Landscapes and Gara Gorge. His composition, Cloud Dance, received its premiere at the 2022 New England Sings!
Paul Marshall
Warwick Dunham is Organist at Saints Mary & Joseph Catholic Cathedral Armidale, and Musician-in-Residence at The Armidale School. Warwick is an outstanding organist and jazz improvisor.
His choral composition This is Our Home was commissioned and premiered for the 2024 New England Sings! concert. In Edge of Sky, new arrangements brought to life the sounds of Sky, ELP, Queen, Pink Floyd and more. In its second season (2019) including a multimedia collaboration with Wombat Tracks Audio’s Martin Hansford, and visuals by Ian Mackay complimented the performance, providing a backdrop of wacky, trippy colours and snippets from classic movies that felt very at home with the music. Musicians were Warwick Dunham on keyboards, Steve Tafra and Steve Thorneycroft on guitars, Sarah Thorneycroft on bass, Dave van Tongeren on drums and Katy Hazelwood appearing as a guest vocalist on a few numbers. Other seasons in Armidale included The Martians are Coming at the Armidale Playhouse.
A graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Warwick has performed as orchestral organist with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Warwick Dunham
Benjamin Thorn was born in Canberra and studied at the Canberra School of Music and the University of Sydney. He has a PhD in Theatre Semiotics and a DipEd. He is both a composer and a performer, mostly on the recorder.
His compositional output includes a range of instrumental, vocal, choral and music theatre works. He has gained wide acclaim for his works for recorder. In 1986 Pipistrelli gialli was an official Australian submission to the ISCM World Music Days. He edited Recorders at Larg, a two-volume collection of mostly Australian recorder music published by Currency Press, which has received considerable critical acclaim. The voice of the crocodile... (published by Moeck Verlag) was a set work for the International Recorder Competition in Karlsruhe in 1992. In 1991, Missa sine verbum won the 2MBS FM Young Composers Award, and Two diagonals and a squiggle the Fellowship of Australian Composers competition, with The voice of the crocodile... being commended in the same competition. Bell Play was performed in the ISCM World Music Days in Belgium in 2012.
Thorn's music tends to be rhythmically lively and tuneful (though with the odd crunchy bit) and he has been referred to 7/8 Anonymous to cure a marked addiction to that time signature.
He has published a number of articles on music and theatre and has been a guest editor of AMC News vol. 13 (Music for Children) and Sounds Australian vol. 20 (Virtuosity). For several years he was the administrator of the composer collective Music Performed, organising composer workshops. In 1986/87 he prepared and presented a 13-part series Hearing the Dots on 2MBS FM.
He has edited and arranged 17th-century works by Strozzi, Castello and Caccini for recorder for Saraband Music, and a collection of piano music for children by Larry Sitsky for Currency Press. He is currently involved in editing and producing publications for Orpheus Music in Armidale. He is the artistic director of the New England Bach Festival.
Benjamin Thorn has performed as a soloist and with a number of groups around Australia and conducted many workshops for schools and other groups.
Since none of the above activities pay particularly well he has worked as a research person, mainly in the field of education and training and as a TAFE teacher, and currently lectures in music education at the University of New England.
He believes not enough music is inspired by vegetables and crocodiles.
